In 1979 I developed a display project at MIT under the dome at 77 Mass Ave based on Schrödinger’s work, What is life? That question was asked of 77 living scholars who gave answers from within their own discipline. Here was consilience before its time.

Today, I continue that exploration in an idiosyncratic way. We created a mathematical model of the universe using base-2 from the Planck Scale to the Age of the Universe and the Observable Universe. There are just 202 notations. The first second falls between notations 143 and 144. The first 500 million years to bring us up to the galaxy-formation epoch in between notations 197 and 198. So, the bulk of the story is about the earliest universe and the story it tells is entirely disconcerting. Yet, math is math, order is order. I believe something is going on here that requires a bigger intellect than mine.

PS. I was born in Boston and grew up in Wilmington, Cambridge and Andover. In my earlier days I was part of the Philomorphs in Sever Hall with Bucky Fuller and Arthur Loeb. One of my very favorite and most difficult courses was with Arthur McGill (HDS) where we studied the Farrer work, Finite and Infinite, and I got caught up within his hypostatic functions.

My grandparents lived on Kirkland Place, custodians of the Episcopal Theological School’s married students dorm. Today, the William James building looks down at that old place. There were quonset huts where the James building stands today.

I am tenacious and will continue working one this model, but to catapult the work forward requires the insight of a person like you. -B

First email: 21 July 2016

RE: We started with Consilience and a very simple, integrated model of the universe

My dear Prof. Dr. E.O. Wilson:

In December 2011 a group of high school people went inside the tetrahedron, dividing by 2, and found the half-sized tetras in the four corners and an octahedron in the middle. We went inside that octahedron, dividing by 2, found the half-sized octas in each of the six corners and eight tetras in each face, all sharing a common center point. We kept going within all19 objects. Within just a few steps we found our nematode friends. In another few steps the prochlorococc greeted us, “Set em up baby…”

In just 40 steps within we were zipping by the fermions and protons and just kept going! In the next 67 steps, you wouldn’t believe what we saw! We were at the door of a singularity that Max Planck gave us those secret codes but it took Frank Wilczek to begin to interpret them (2001, Physics Today, Climbing Mt. Planck I-III).

Just over 112 notations. What was that?

It didn’t take too long before we got the bright idea, “Let’s multiply by 2.” What an epiphany! In less than 90 steps we were out to the Age of the Universe and the Observable Universe. Looking at ourselves, we were lost within all this new information, so we decided to turn to the experts. Huh? We found Kees Boeke’s base-10 but he only had 40 quick jumps and missed so much of life! We found Stephen Hawking but he was upside down. Where are the experts?

What? Huh? Our knowledge of the universe is so incomplete our sense of the universal is so limited, our understanding of the constants is so elementary, we are flying blind.

The Encyclopedia of Life truly needs a wonderfully integrative, expansive container so it doesn’t get walled in! Yes, a wall-less container where ideas and creativity can explode old boundary conditions.

Now we are amateurs, but we really feel that biology and the search for life must begin with that initial creation, the first moment, when there was a profound integration.